Month: January 2015

Good afternoon class. Now that you’ve all had a chance to look over the syllabus, I’d like to set down a solid foundation of the non-oppressive language we will be using throughout the semester.

For some of you, these words will be familiar but the definitions may be slightly different. For others, this list will look like a foreign language. It does not matter to me what level of experience you already have in transfeminism discussions, for the purposes of this class we are all going to start from the beginning so there will be no confusion or misunderstanding.

A side note, many of your required reading will use slightly different language or definitions. I ask you to remember that language is an ever-evolving aspect of communication for all groups, not just trans women. If at any point during your reading you become confused or would like clarification, please do not hesitate to ask me for assistance. The last thing I want is for something as petty as word choice to get in the way of fighting transmisogyny.

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“Closets are for clothes, not people,” is a common battle cry of the queer rights movement. But many fail to appreciate the ways clothes can be used to trap us or free us.

Like it or not, humans make assumptions about other humans based on their bodies and the articles used to cover those bodies. As much as I genuinely believe clothes should not have gender attached to them, I also know I project a very different message to the world as a 28-year-old woman wearing jeans and flannel than I did when I was a 17-year-old kid wearing jeans and flannel.

Many people fail to realize (because they’ve never had to think about it) how much about our gender and sexuality we communicate through our clothing. And even fewer people realize how much others rely on our body and clothes to interpret clues about our gender and sexuality. This is why the same outfit on two different bodies can be interpreted in wildly different ways depending on their skin tone, haircut, fat distribution, size, height, and many other uncontrollable factors. And why even the same clothes worn at different points in our lives can communicate drastically different things.

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Hello students. I would like to welcome you to Trans Women’s Studies 101, an introductory class on recognizing and fighting transmisogyny in a cissexist society.

If you’ll please take a look at your syllabus, you will see an annotated bibliography of our required reading and a brief discussion of why the work is important. The texts are separated into Core Textbook and Supplemental Text categories.

Please note, I made efforts to prefer trans women/transfeminine authors (especially black trans women and trans women of color) over cis or trans men/transmasculine authors when at all possible. This is not because cis or trans men/transmasculine authors are not capable of writing relevant texts, but because first-hand testimony will always be preferred over second-hand or third-hand in this class, and only trans women/transfeminine authors have first-hand experience with transmisogyny. Sadly, there just aren’t enough trans women authors being supported and published by the industry, and so we must make do with the best we have.

For this reason, be aware of any authors denoted by an asterisk. These authors are nottrans women/transfeminine authors, and therefore their opinions about issues directly affecting trans women should not be valued over those of actual trans women in regards to transmisogyny.